Tag: job search

Is It Too Good To Be True?

So you’re browsing the job boards and an advert catches your eye. It’s got fantastic pay, work from home and it’s work you’re already doing! This sounds almost too good to be true, right?

As you read the advert a bit more carefully, you might spot a few things that just don’t add up; maybe it’s some typos or the reply-to email address.

There are hundreds of job scams posted on the internet every week, maybe even thousands! Today, we’re going to talk about how to spot these and make sure you don’t fall victim to them, let’s go:

No Experience Needed – Right off the bat, if the advert you’re looking at says “no experience needed, even if you’re a recent graduate”, then alarm bells should be going off in your head.

They might also try to lure you in by offering large salaries, bonuses, training and instant job offers.

If the advert is insisting that anyone can do the job, then you should be treading carefully.

You Need To Give THEM Money – So you’ve applied and received an email back saying “we need you to put £500 into this bank account for expenses and certificates”, this is when you should delete and block this ’employer’ completely. A real employer would never ask for your bank details, money or personal information up front.

Their Communications – Received an email from davidjon3s@yahoo.co.uk? It’s most likely a spoof address. Take a closer look at the way they spell their company names and website (e.g. Pay pal instead of PayPal).

As previously mentioned, re-read the job advert and scan it closely for spelling mistakes, scammers usually post adverts with very poorly written English.

SMS Interview – Skype and telephone interviews have become an incredibly common and effective way for recruiters to conduct interviews these days. If a recruiter has contacted you and wants to interview you via SMS (text messaging) or by via an IM service like Facebook, then that might be enough to prove that this is a scam.

What’s The Time Mr Scammer? – Take note of when this ‘recruiter’ contacts you. If you find yourself receiving emails and calls at 3am, then approach with caution. Generally, emails and calls will almost always be during normal business hours.

Research – Google the company or the contact name to see what you can dig up on them. Check their website (if one is available) and the contact information (again, if it’s available). Compare these details with the ones in their emails and Google Local / Maps results

If you’re struggling to find them, then I would highly recommend trying some of the Google Search Operators; if you can’t find them using these, then you’re never going to find them!

Try stitching a sentence together like “*Example Name*” AND “*Example Company*”, placing those quotation marks around the words tells Google to search exactly this word or phrase. The ‘AND’ will include both results within a close proximity of each other.

The consequences of falling for these scammers tricks and cons can be very severe, don’t fall victim to them.

Hopefully, you’re now a job scams spotting superhero and will be able to keep yourself safe when conducting a job search.

It’s Tuesday and It’s Time For Some Tech!

Today, I’m going to be going through some of the best websites that you should be investing your time in while conducting your job search!

Oh and yes, the titles below (almost) all link to our pages within those sites, so make sure you check them out!

Let’s begin:

1. LinkedIn – We’re big advocates of LinkedIn, I’m sure you’re already aware that you should be using LinkedIn as a resource when job hunting, but if you’re not, then you’re really missing out!

Use it to directly contact / connect with Recruiters and Hiring Managers, follow companies to find out what positions they are currently trying to fill, showcase yourself through your personal profile (recommendations are a must have), and to network with others in groups and on company pages. We post on it multiple times a day, often with new vacancies that our clients have assigned to us (that’s a good reason to check us out, right?).

2. Twitter – “Twitter?!” you might be saying or thinking. Yes, Twitter! It’s quite similar to the LinkedIn strategy above; create a good looking profile with relevant keywords in the bio section (limited to 160 characters), follow as many Recruitment / career accounts as you can (industry relevant as well), tweet smart and be someone worth following!

3. CV-Library – The big kid on the ‘job board block’! You’re very much missing out if you’re not signed up for CV-Library. Make sure you use their ‘jobs via email’ alerts to make sure you don’t miss anything that’s posted!

4. Jobsite – Another good’un that you should be signed up with! I don’t have much to say about it, apart from that it should definitely be in your job search arsenal!

5. Indeed – Indeed may actually the best of the job boards! Think of it as a ‘job search engine’, it essentially crawls hundreds of thousands of careers websites every day (including ours) for new vacancies, and then automatically posts them. It is literally overflowing with fresh jobs!

They also have a very powerful jobs by email service; if you’re only interested in receiving jobs such as (for example) a Mechanical Design Engineer, then make sure you wrap that text in speech marks, this will tell Indeed to only search and send jobs which have exactly “Mechanical Design Engineer” in them.

6. Facebook – I wasn’t actually going to put Facebook on to this list until I remembered something invaluable about it! Local groups! Recruiters and Hiring Managers love using these to advertise vacancies, but they aren’t the only ones, you will often find if you join a group with a large member base, that there will always be a few people in there who will proactively share jobs that they spot online!

Try searching for “jobs in …..”, replace the dots with whatever town or county you’re looking for a career in, and you’ll usually find something almost straight away!

That’s it for today’s post, I hope you’ve got something to take away from it, and if not..well then sorry for wasting 5 minutes of your time! Remember, these are just a small collection of websites which in my (almost) two years of experience working here I have seen; there’s plenty of others out there which you could and should be searching on!

Remember, these are just a small collection of some of the websites which in my (almost) two years of working here I have seen; there’s plenty of others out there which you could and should using in your job search.

Infographic for your thoughts?

I love a good infographic (career infographics to be precise) and frequently post them to our social channels; they provide quick and extremely useful pieces of information in a clear, precise and (usually) pleasing-to-the-eye way!

So, here are 10 career infographics which I felt were worthy of featuring; let’s begin: (please note that these aren’t in any particular order)

If you’re wondering what to do with your life, be you a school leaver or even an experienced professional looking for a new career path, then this list will definitely point you in the right direction!

Did you know that 93% of employability is determined by preparation and that only 1 in 10 candidates spends 2 hours of more preparing! I know that because I stole it from the article, haha. But seriously, interview preparation is EVERYTHING; it’s worth it, I promise you.

I’m a big advocate of LinkedIn (as you can tell by this one and some of my other blog posts) and why on earth wouldn’t you be?! It’s the largest business to business network in the world at your fingertips..for free! If you want to get noticed on LinkedIn though, you need to put in the hard work – again, this is worth it in the long run!

Go on, admit it, you might have come across this article whilst procrastinating! It’s fine! It happens to the best of us! However, you wouldn’t be procrastinating if you were either in a job / in a job that you enjoyed. I personally found numbers 2, 4, 6 and 9 very useful.

As Siofra mentions in this post, “it doesn’t matter how many job interviews you undertake” or what the level of position is, every single job interview you attend will be a nerve juddering experience. So that’s why EssayTigers came up with this great infographic to help you out!

Want to succeed in life? Of course you do! Well, then it’s worth implementing these everyday habits into your routine! Transform yourself and see where it takes you!

That’s that! Finito! Remember that these are just a small selection of my favourite career infographics, I’ll have some more for you very soon! In the meantime, you can visit our LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook pages for more!